"Hello osmdroid World"

osmdroid's MapView is basically a replacement for Google's MapView class.
First of all, create your Android project, and follow HowToMaven if you're using Maven, or follow HowToGradle if you're using Gradle/Android Studio. This will help you get the binaries for osmdroid included in your project.

Manifest

In most cases, you will have to set the following authorizations in your AndroidManifest.xml:

Main Activity

We now create the main activity (MainActivity.java):

import org.osmdroid.tileprovider.tilesource.TileSourceFactory;
import org.osmdroid.views.MapView;
public class MainActivity extends Activity {
MapView map = null;
@Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
//handle permissions first, before map is created. not depicted here
//load/initialize the osmdroid configuration, this can be done
Context ctx = getApplicationContext();
Configuration.getInstance().load(ctx, PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(ctx));
//setting this before the layout is inflated is a good idea
//it 'should' ensure that the map has a writable location for the map cache, even without permissions
//if no tiles are displayed, you can try overriding the cache path using Configuration.getInstance().setCachePath
//see also StorageUtils
//note, the load method also sets the HTTP User Agent to your application's package name, abusing osm's tile servers will get you banned based on this string
//inflate and create the map
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
map = (MapView) findViewById(R.id.map);
map.setTileSource(TileSourceFactory.MAPNIK);
}
public void onResume(){
super.onResume();
//this will refresh the osmdroid configuration on resuming.
//if you make changes to the configuration, use
//SharedPreferences prefs = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this);
//Configuration.getInstance().load(this, PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this));
map.onResume(); //needed for compass, my location overlays, v6.0.0 and up
}
public void onPause(){
super.onPause();
//this will refresh the osmdroid configuration on resuming.
//if you make changes to the configuration, use
//SharedPreferences prefs = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(this);
//Configuration.getInstance().save(this, prefs);
map.onPause(); //needed for compass, my location overlays, v6.0.0 and up
}
}

And that's enough to give it a try, and see the world map.

Then we add default zoom buttons, and ability to zoom with 2 fingers (multi-touch)

map.setBuiltInZoomControls(true);
map.setMultiTouchControls(true);

We can move the map on a default view point. For this, we need access to the map controller:

Advanced tutorial

The best example of how to use the osmdroid library is our OpenStreetMapViewer sample project. It contains a basic osmdroid application plus a few special-use examples. It is recommended you use this project as an example for building your application.

Images for Buttons and whatnot

For osmdroid 4.3 and older, there's a number of resources that the map uses for various user interface helpers, such as zoom in/out buttons, the device's current location when GPS is available and more. These resources are loaded via the "ResourceProxy". The idea is that you can either bring your own images or borrow the ones from osmdroid. If you're borrowing, then you'll want to grab the files located here and add them to your project "src/main/res/drawable".

For osmdroid 5.0 and 5.1, the drawables are included with the AAR package. The resource proxy is still present and used so you can override values and images as needed.

For osmdroid 5.2 and up, the resource proxy is removed from the API set and replaced with Android context.

Create a custom Resource Proxy

Applies only to versions prior to 5.2

As mentioned above, the Resource Proxy is a bit of a strange animal that osmdroid uses to load some images for user interface controls. If you're using any of the built-in controls that need images (zoom in/out, person icon, etc) you'll either need to provide your own images, borrow the images from osmdroid's example app, or provide your own implementation of Resource Proxy.

The example osmdroid app includes an example of this called CustomResourceProxy (included with > 4.3 osmdroid). All it does is change the my location drawable (person) to an alternate image. The example is below.

Map Overlays

How to add the My Location overlay

Note: you need manifest Fine Location permissions and if you are targeting API23+ APIs, you have to ask the user to explicitly grant location runtime permissions.

Notice: this is a very simple example that does not handle android lifecycle correctly.
Versions 5.6.5 and older, you'll need to handle automatically disabling/enabling the location provider with android life cycle events.
Version 6.0.0, this is handled so long as you call map view onPause and onResume appropriately.

How to add a compass overlay

Notice: this is a very simple example that does not handle android lifecycle correctly.
Versions 5.6.5 and older, you'll need to handle automatically disabling/enabling the compass/orientation provider with android life cycle events.
Version 6.0.0, this is handled so long as you call map view onPause and onResume appropriately.

How to add Map Scale bar overlay

mScaleBarOverlay = new ScaleBarOverlay(context);
mScaleBarOverlay.setCentred(true);
//play around with these values to get the location on screen in the right place for your applicatio
mScaleBarOverlay.setScaleBarOffset(dm.widthPixels / 2, 10);
mMapView.getOverlays().add(this.mScaleBarOverlay);

How to add the built-in Minimap

Note: do not use when rotation is enabled! (Keep reading for a work around)

mMinimapOverlay = new MinimapOverlay(context, mMapView.getTileRequestCompleteHandler());
mMinimapOverlay.setWidth(dm.widthPixels / 5);
mMinimapOverlay.setHeight(dm.heightPixels / 5);
//optionally, you can set the minimap to a different tile source
//mMinimapOverlay.setTileSource(....);
mMapView.getOverlays().add(this.mMinimapOverlay);

Versions 5.6.5 and older: If you want the minimap to stay put when rotation is enabled, create a second map view in your layout file, then wire up a change listener on the main map and use that to set the location on the minimap. For the reverse, you need to do the same process, however, you have to filter map motion events to prevent infinite looping. There's an example on how to sync the views within the example application.

How many icons can I put on the map?

The answer is greatly dependent on what hardware the osmdroid based app is running on. A Samsung S5 (no endorsement intended) ran just fine at 3k icons and was noticeably choppy at 6k icons. Your mileage may vary. X86 Android running on modern hardware will perform great at even higher numbers. However, it's recommended to limit the amount of stuff you're rendering, if at all possible.

If you're also drawing paths, lines, polygons, etc, then this also changes the equation. Drawing multipoint graphics is computationally more expensive and thus negatively affects performance under higher loads. To mitigate performance issues with multipoint graphics, one strategy would be to reduce the number of points handed off to the map engine when at a higher zoom level (numerically lower), then increase the fidelity as the user zoom's in. In effect, you would be clipping the visible data at the map view bounds so that the map view only "knows" about what's on screen and doesn't have to loop through all 10k icons that you want on the map. Although you can give the map view all 10k objects, but every time the map moves or zooms, it will iterate over all 10k items to calculate where to draw them (if at all). Using this mechanism paired with map motion listeners and a database query that supports geographic bounds, you can support a rich experience for users with lots of data and still have reasonable performance.

Reusing drawables for icons will help with memory usage too.

Map Sources, Imagery and Tile sets.

Using osmdroid in a recycler view

Applies to: v5.6.5 and older. (v6.0.0 has this fix applied already)

It has been brought up a view times that osmdroid's MapView does not play nicely in a RecyclerView. The MapView is a custom android ViewGroup that implements the necessary API calls that ViewGroup requires, namely onDetachedFromWindow. In this function call, osmdroid basically calls destructors on all associated overlays, threading, tile loading, etc. This is destructive and cannot be reinitialized. This was done primarily to prevent memory leaks. Since ViewGroup does not have a destroy method or anything else that happens during garbage collection, this is really the only place we can put clean up code. As such, using the map in a recycler view won't work without this simple one liner.

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 16)
mapView.setHasTransientState(true);

Now naturally, this will only function on devices at API16 (Jelly Bean) and newer so the recommendation is to simply not use osmdroid in a recycler view for older APIs. The alternative approach is for you to extend the MapView and override the method for public void onDetach() and simply provide an empty body. This will create memory leaks though so use with caution.